Archive for March, 2007

Taking my brain out to the cleaners

Sunday, March 4th, 2007

Here I am, semi-zonked out by the lingering whatevers I caught last weekend, barely holding on to the edge of sanity. My mind races at 50,000 RPMs, but the only part of my body able to gear up to even half that capacity are my fingers and my eyeballs. If not for my closeness of my laptop, I doubt I could generate the locomotive force to walk to my desk and write this drivel. I think I can count this general state of affairs to the following forces:

  • A certain lack of cold medicine, and a matching lack of desire to spend the cash to get some in light of a foggy knowledge of the exact cost of some final costs of car repairs before a planned trip to North Carolina.
  • The shifting of the magnetic poles.
  • Playing tech support the entire weekend, helping to set up my sister’s new iMac computer with Boot Camp so she could still play all her Windows games, then migrating all her data and setting up a wireless network.
  • The rapid warming and cooling of the greater New Jersey area. In the 60′s and the end of last week, and back to the 30′s in the here and now.
  • The massive quantity of WiiSports played at my friend Eileen’s birthday, after finally having found extra controllers for sale.
  • Good friend Jesse bowling a 299 in said game of WiiSports. Still can’t believe he came so close, but then again he always did do well in sports. Maybe this is some kind of extension of that. Maybe he bribed a witch to cast some voodoo on his apartment and that was distorting time and/or space.
  • The unusual cuteness of puppies and babies.

Yeah, it could be any of that, all of it, or nothing of it at all. Et al. Et tu. Honolulu. Kajagoogoo. Wait…what was I taking about again?

Snow capped mountains, maple syrup, and all the trimmings

Thursday, March 1st, 2007

Seeing as how this has been an unusually warm winter here in the vicinity of Gotham, I had begun to forget what real snow was like. It had also been too long since I tried sliding down a mountain, or taken a decent road trip. Put all those things together, and you have the makings of a long overdue ski trip — which I and my friends from the city did this past weekend.

We rented a great house in Windham, Vermont for the weekend, and spent Saturday attacking the slopes at Stratton. My first snowboarding experience outside of the sloped ice rink known as Camleback in the Poconos, and I can say that the drive north was well worth it. There was a world of difference between the facilities and staff: the snow was well groomed, there was almost no wait for the majority of the lifts (the gondolas to the top of the mountain being the one exception), and everyone I dealt with there was helpful and courteous (a trait I experienced throughout the state, actually).

The whole weekend was packed with activity, even when we weren’t on the slopes. The house we were at had a sweet pool table, I brought my Wii and everyone had lots of fun making miniature versions of themselves and flailing around with a remote control, and there was much drinking and music and what not. In fact, the only real down side to the whole affair was when good friend Lauren tore her ACL on the last run of the day on the top of the mountain. But as the ski patrol said, at least it was on the last run and not the first.

All in all, I think the experience went extremely well, and I’m looking forward to doing it again next year. Next time I hope we can fit in two days on the slopes. That way I can still put in more time on the snowboard and still reacquaint myself with those two plank things called skis.

(Note: In the past, I would have waited until — silly notions about chronological posting and all that rot. That would have robbed you all of two extra posts, and I’m trying to avoid that kind of stuff….)